Trombone Shorty turns Beantown into a Crescent City outpost

Wednesday

Oct 11, 2017 at 5:07 AMOct 11, 2017 at 6:24 AM

jaymiller

Is it any coincidence that on the day Trombone Shorty came to Boston the area was beset by a New Orleans-like heat wave..on October 10?

Ha! Try convincing any of the 1700 satiated–and saturated–music fans who emerged giddily Tuesday night from the steam bath previously known as The Orpheum Theater after Shorty and his band, Orleans Avenue, had delivered a one-hour-forty-minute blast of their rockin' funk and jazz. The crowd was standing throughout the show, and it was truly amazing to see how many dance moves patrons could actually manage within the tight confines of the ancient theater's seating.

Trombone Shorty's septet is on a short fall tour, before they head over to Europe, where their fall tour of the continent begins in Ireland on November 11. Tuesday was the first date on the American leg of the tour, but the set was both a polished production, with six strobes behind the stage and others, both white and purple, arrayed overhead, and yet also the kind of loosey-goosey jam session that made almost everything seem like it was spontaneous and unplanned.

Trombone Shorty, aka Troy Andrews, has already had a dazzling career and he's still just 31. That's what happens when you grow up in a musical family in the Crescent City, and make your stage debut, at age four, jamming with Bo Diddley. Shorty made his recording debut in 2002, age 16, with “Trombone Shorty's Swingin' Gate” on the local Louisiana Red Hot label. Three years later his profile raised considerably as a member of rocker Lenny Kravitz' horn section. His major label debut was 2010′s “Backatown,” which dominated the Billboard jazz charts for nine weeks.

Lots of fans are familiar with various details of Shorty's work, his collaborations and sideman work with a litany of musical greats like U2, Foo Fighters, and Green Day. Most recently, Shorty spent the summer of 2016 opening shows for Hall and Oates. Earlier in 2017, he and his band opened the Red Hot Chili Peppers' tour. At the end of April this year, Shorty released his first album in four years, “Parking Lot Symphony,” on Blue Note Records, the 11th album under his own name (he appears as sideman or collaborator on three times that many).

Trombone Shorty's set opened with a majestic overture type of number, possibly “Backatown,” with the band creating a big arena rock sound, as the lead lines were taken by Shorty's trombone, BK Jackson's tenor sax, and Dan Oestreicher's baritone sax. Lead guitarist Peter Murano crafted impressive lines of his own, and the second guitarist, Joshua Cary, played mostly rhythm for the bulk of the show. But the Orleans Avenue rhythmic core is Joey Peebles on drums and longtime Shorty pal Mike Bailey on bass, and they are both monsters who kept the pot boiling.

There's certainly plenty of jazz content in a Trombone Shorty show, but it is presented with rock dynamics and a funk foundation. There aren't many quiet moments to be sure, much of the night resembled a rock concert, and it was well nigh impossible not to move and groove to the music. The funk-rocker “The Craziest Thing” slowed things down just a tad, sort of a brisk midtempo power ballad. “On the Way Down” was also not quite a ballad and not quite a rocker, but rather a bluesy funk-rock tune that suggested you meet the same folks on your way up, as on the way down, its midtempo melody contrasted with the boiling rhythms underpinning it.

Shorty switched to trumpet for “Here Come the Girls,” a cover from the new album. It's an Allan Toussaint tune made famous by New Orleans legend Ernie K. Doe, and Shorty introduced it as a trip through his old neighborhood. The song itself was a delightful blend, a soul groove enhanced by Shorty's jazz trumpet solo, but also with a deeply-ingrained funk quotient centered on that honking baritone sax. “One Night Only” would be closest thing to a ballad Tuesday, a sizzling soul-funk tune about a brief but hot affair. That song became a showcase for Bailey, in a lengthy bass solo, where everyone but him and Peebles left the stage, and he strode the stage, duckwalked, climbed the drum riser and uncorked some stunning sounds out of his five-string bass. The song then finished in an extended coda featuring only the three horns–so that this simple love song had morphed into a ten-minute opus with three distinct movements.

The instrumental “Tripped Out Slim,” from the new CD, remembers a late friend of the band, and it was a marvelously sinuous melody centered on the three horns, but also tossing in quotes from “The Pink Panther Theme,” which gave it a certain insouciance. “Where It At?” sounded like a casual jam session, its heavy funk framing Shorty's plaintive vocal with the chorus “give me my heart back..”

How can we briefly describe the number apparently titled “Lose Control”? The tune sounded more like a horn band playing rock, with Murano's guitar supplying the funk feel, and it all evolved into a call-and-response between the guitars and bass, and the horns. But then it went sideways into James Brown's “Get Up Offa That Thing,” and finally a raucous “I Feel Good” before resolving back into the main theme after a funk workout that left the audience exhausted.

But it was the cover of The Meters' “It Ain't No Use” that really stole the show. Shorty himself has referred to The Meters as 'New Orleans' Beatles,' and they are surely the masters of New Orleans musical gumbo. The septet did a wonderful job of crafting that song's swirling rhythms and cross-currents, as Shorty sang his most soulful vocal, stretching out the lines as the man telling his gal, “ain't no use, to cut me loose, I wouldn't last a day without you..” The two guitarists capped it off with a unison solo, as Shorty jumped back on the drum kit to demonstrate his versatility. That song, probably approaching 15 minutes long, wound down with a gloriously invigorating tenor sax/drums duet between Shorty and Jackson. Pretty hard to top that, but the encore of “Whatcha Gonna Do?” came close with its wild celebration of all things Bourbon Street, including the rousing finale of “When the Saints Go Marching In.”

Few performers in any genre could contend with Trombone Shorty, but Vintage Trouble's singer Ty Taylor and guitarist Nalle Colt are surely two, and their 40-minute set was a tasty appetizer of rock 'n'soul. Taylor, in his navy blue and green plaid suit, was constant motion as he sang their early favorite, “Blues Hand Me Down,” and even reached the fourth row of the second section of floor seats, as he clambered through the crowd while singing it. The soul ballad “Nobody Told Me” could be a future classic, topped off Tuesday by a coda of gospel glissandos. The more textured “Crystal Clarity” showed Vintage Trouble in more nuanced fare, with the quartet enhanced by a keyboardist on this tour, and with Taylor adding his own trombone solo. But Vintage Trouble's final song summed up their appeal the best, as “Knock Me Out” revealed the kind of irresistible cauldron you'd get if Wilson Pickett joined Z.Z. Top.